Movies: Tony Wilson

Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by a band known as the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their per...

The story of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, from his schoolboy days in 1973 to his suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour in 1980....

Steve Coogan, an arrogant actor with low self-esteem and a complicated love life, is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor R...

The death of punk icon and X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene sends her daughter on a journey through her mother's archives in this intimate documentary....

A chronological account of the influential late 1970s English rock band....

Documentary that outlines the 1990s and the decade the changed the world....

The Manchester Passion is a passion play about the last hours of Jesus, retold using a backdrop of the contemporary music of Manchester, England. The event took place on the streets of Manchester, and aired live on BBC Three on Good Friday, 14 April ...

A 1-hour Documentary looking at the Manchester post-punk group and its infamous leader Mark E Smith. The Film follows the current band recording their final Session for the John Peel Show (they were his favourite group and recorded more sessions than...

Documentary celebrating the triumph, tragedy and human comedy that was Manchester record company, Factory. Started by the late Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus, Peter Saville and Martin Hannett in the late 1970s, it became known as the home of Joy Divsion, ...

Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken an...

Catch: The Hold Not Taken is a 2005 feature documentary film that contrasts the billion dollar industry of professional wrestling with its humble roots in Lancashire, England, where the original tradition struggles to survive. The documentary examin...

Bill Nighy, Pete Postlewaite and (briefly) Julie Walters, then all of the Everyman Theatre Company, feature in this potent reportage/dramatisation hybrid about the occupation of the Fisher-Bendix Factory in Kirkby. Dohany uses a variety of imaginativ...

Documentary featuring a cavalcade of Northern comedy stars including the great Frank Randle, George Formby, Arthur Askey, Norman Evans and many more. The North of England has always enjoyed its own very particular brand of comedy, best seen today in ...

In the final days of the yuppie decade, the summer of ’89 saw a new type of youth rebellion rip through the cultural landscape, with thousands of young people dancing at illegal Acid House parties in fields and aircraft hangars around the M25. Set ag...

Part concert, part documentary, this film follows the band’s preparations in the re-staging of their acclaimed collaboration So It Goes.. with the artist Liam Gillick and the 12-piece synthesiser orchestra that spectacularly captured the headlines du...

Shadowplayers is a two hour documentary film by James Nice tracing the early history of iconic Manchester Label Factory Records between 1978 and 1981. The facts and the fictions are explored through candid interviews with 22 key participants, includ...

Director Bill Keating built a programme around following Rory through a day of his short 1972 Irish tour. At the center of the programme is a recording of the concert Rory played in the Savoy Cinema in Limerick on May 11th 1972....

Upon his release from a mental hospital, James re-kindles his relationship with pirate DJ Marion, helping her kick her nasty heroin addiction. However, when Marion is found dead, James and Marion's father hatch a plan to trap and expose the 'protecte...

Rising from the ashes of the legendary British post-punk unit Joy Division, the enigmatic New Order triumphed over tragedy to emerge as one of the most influential and acclaimed bands of the 1980's, embracing the electronic textures and disco rhythms...

An examination into Factory Records. The members of New Order interview founders Tony Wilson and Martin Hannett, who speak on the philosophical and cultural purpose of their label, and their associates, who mostly appear frustrated or confused. Rob G...